Arranging Professions: A Case Study (Part 1)

As I’m sitting here recovering data from a crashed RAID drive (yes again, shutup) I decided I’d think about what characters and professions I will be going into the Mists of Pandaria launch and decided we might as well make a case study out of it, kill two birds with one stone and what-not. I’ll make this into a series as it should be interesting to track this as we get closer to the new expansion. Look forward to hearing more about this later.

Here’s the issue: Two days ago my Priest’s profession slots were still empty, so I decided since I was likely going to use my Priest as my main going into the expansion, I might as well load up on gathering professions since they make so much at the beginning of the expansion and then change them to something more useful later on. Now this is were I run into some issues with my profession arrangement:

While a Mining/Herbalist combo is ideal, it’s even more ideal on a Druid while mine is currently on my Priest. This is compounded by several issues:

I don’t currently have a DPS spec in my Priest (I’m Disc/Holy) while Feral is my Main Spec on my Druid

My Druid already has two perfectly good professions in an excellent combo (all my bars can go to the one character)

Having a Jewelcrafter and Enchanter on the same character is ideal, less mailing items between characters

Levelling two identical characters (my two Deathknights) through identical content (Northrend) for even 5 levels is a real pain

So obviously a few things here are causing issues. Ideally this would be the setup that I’d like:

Character

Level

Profession

Profession

Paladin

85

Enchanting

Jewelcrafting

Druid

85

Mining

Herbalism

Priest

85

Inscription

Alchemy

Deathknight

80

Engineering

Blacksmithing

Deathknight

80

Tailoring

???

While that would be good for like the first week but then that druid would be better off having crafting professions, and then it’d have to be rearranged again! So I’d be dropping, picking up, dropping, and then picking up again in the course of like 2 months – not a good idea. Or, I could continue with my Priest’s Mining and Herbalism through the launch and then switch to like Alchemy/Tailoring and drop the tailoring on my second DK for herbalism just so I can have a dual gatherer. This’d mean I’d have to pick of Shadow spec likely to get through the rigors of levelling in Mists of Pandaria since I doubt atonement spec is going to persist into the new talent system.

We’ll follow up on this in a week or so and see how I’m doing and any changes I’ve made. Until then looking forward to any input on this issue!

2 comments

I feel you with northrend, powering up with 77 cata greens and destroying people in Bg’s helps me get through that last bit.

where is your Skinner?

I’m going through a similar thing trying to sort out professions on 2nd account, lots of gaps making it even harder to work out what to put where, i’ll probbaly go into mop with a few open slots then powerlevel which profession is doing well, is best stacked.

I hate leveling, I really, really do. I don’t think there was ever a single point where I was like “Oh boy leveling that character was fun, I’d do that again” hence my small selection of characters even taking every shortcut I could find haha.

The reason I don’t have a skinner is because I hate gathering professions and I don’t have a leatherworker either. Honestly I just triage my professions and get the most important ones first but you reminded me I didn’t have a leatherworker in this setup thanks ^_^